Funding available for Clare food growers

Community and voluntary organisations across Co Clare are being encouraged to develop a food growing project in their area with a pool of funding worth €70,000 now available.

Energia’s Get Ireland Growing Fund will be split across three categories, ‘Sow’, ‘Grow’ and ‘Harvest’ with awards ranging from €500 to €2,000. Together GIY and Energia will support at least 85 community food growing groups from all across the country.

Launching the initiative, the founder of GIY Michael Kelly said, “Energia Get Ireland Growing’ rewards and celebrates the community champions who are putting food back at the heart of their communities”.

In addition to the funding provided, GIY also provides additional supports and opportunities for knowledge exchange between the projects, helping the best ideas to be shared through ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing’. All of the projects remain part of the GIY network in the long term, giving them access to other GIY resources and additional groups and projects within the network, creating a long-term legacy.

Commenting at the launch, Geoff Codd, Head of Marketing at Energia said, “Sustainability is central to everything Energia does. That’s why we’ve invested €300m in new wind farms since 2008 and we’re the only energy supplier to provide 100% ‘green’ energy to Irish homes for the last three years in a row. So, we’re delighted to support smart and sustainable living through Energia Get Ireland Growing. Growing your own fruit and veg and living healthily and sustainably are clearly clever choices”

The funding pool is now open to any community group, school, NGO or Not for Profit, community garden or allotment group, GIY group, hospital, crèche, direct provision centre, men’s shed or any group who grows their own food, or wants to grow food and wants to promote growing food. The deadline for applications is the end of January 2017 and applications can be made online.

GIY’s ‘Get Ireland Growing’ initiative has supported over 400 community food growing projects to date, positively impacting over 100,000 people. €270,000 has been awarded over the last four years and this was distributed to projects all across the country.